The origin of new alleles

Unless the mutation was sufficiently severe as to damage the chromosomal structure severely enough to prevent meiosis continuing how would this act as any sort of filter? All you would be doing in most cases would be exchanging which copy of a chromosome a particular allele ended up on, how would this act as any sort of filter to prevent an allele ending up in a gamete? In the case of gene conversion you might get an allele being completely replaced but that is as likely to be by the new mutant form as it is the wild type. You might get more cases where a recessive embryonic lethal gene was paired up with the same allele which would lead to the offspring of that gamete dying early in development but it wouldn't interfere with the actual formation of the gametes.Could you provide a reference to somewhere where this theory is actually put forward, because as it is it doesn't sound quite right to me.TTFN,WK

AS far as I understand it you are wrong, but you aren't really saying anything specific enough to tell you how wrong.Perhaps you are getting crossing-over confused with mismatch repair. Some of the same enzymes or related ones are involved in both processes but the two processes remain distinct.As far as an allele being parasitic goes, that would only apply to deleterious mutations since if the mutation was not deleterious then the relationship would be mutualistic or possibly commensal rather than parasitic.TTFN,WK

No it isn't, and it isn't a good way of doing it either. I simply used this formulation as Hoot Mon had decided to approach mutation in general, rather than specific things such as retroviral insertions, as a 'parasitic' burden on the genome and I was suggesting this could only be an accurate characterisation if the allele in question was detrimental.If we can consider a novel allelic variant to be parasitic in the context of a deleterious mutation, which may be propagated but at the expensive of a fitness decrease to the host genome, then I am just extending the analogy to consider a beneficial mutation, which would increase the organisms fitness and mean both that the novel allele would propagate and the host genome would also gain, as mutualistic.TTFN,WK

That's all moderatley tenable speculation but you did make one very specific claim that crossing over in some way acted as a filter for alleles during meiosis? Do you think you were mistaken about this?As I pointed out previously crossing over and gene conversion can lead to recombinations of genes which will cause any offspring to die early in development, but this is not the same as preventing them from becoming gametes in the first place.TTFN,WK

No, they really aren't. A plasmid is something very specific and transposons are not the same thing at all.A plasmid is a substantial genetic fragment which exists independently of the genome. There can be exchange of genetic material between plasmids and the nuclear genome but it is not the same as transposon activity.A plasmid may contain transposons but they are not the same thing.If you are going to go so wildly off the mark you should provide some references for your claims.TTFN,WK

The infection need not occur during spermatogenesis or even in the sperm at all. Bacteria surviving in the womb environment or which can pass through the placenta, or even simply the relevant sequence of transposon DNA perhaps given the number of active transposase like enzymes around such as endogenous integrases, could affect an embryo at an early enough developmental stage to affect all or some of the germ line lineage.TTFN,WK

Maybe Crash is confused because you use nonsense sentences like this that give the impression you don't have the first clue what you are talking about.TTFN,WK

And where in that abstract was there any mention of 'wild digital codes circulating through our veins and homologies'?It doesn't help your case to use something completely unrelated to your nonsense sentence as some sort of support for its not being nonsense.Indeed that paper only addresses 'animal transposons in humans' in as much as human are animals. If these sequences were derived from horizontal gene transmission this paper sugests it was at least prior to the divergence of man and chimps if not sooner.TTFN,WK

That wouldn't have made you any more right. You associated a whole class of genetic sequences, transposons, and the the genes which modulate their movement, transposases, with one specific family within that class, the Mariner like transposases and transposable elements. You are just as wrong to use Mariner as a generic name for all transposable elements as you were to use it as a generic name for all transposons.TTFN,WK

Actually I think that DNA is technically a digital code, at least if you only consider the primary sequence, I'm not sure how epigenetic phenomena would affect that classification. I think all that is required is for the code to consist of discrete units, i.e. the four basic nucleotides, rather than being from an analogue spectrum.TTFN,WK

It was in Message 28... They are only referred to as "mariner genes" when they are of the Mariner family as opposed to the PiggyBAC, Minos, Hermes or Sleeping beauty Families or whatever other families remain to be discovered.And they really aren't plasmids! That it agrees entirely with what I said, that the Mariner elements are a family within the larger class of transposons/jumping genes and not a suitable generic term for all jumping genes. What I would say is sloppily worded is the first sentence which make it ambiguous whether it is 'transposable elements' or 'Mariner transposable elements' which are popularly known as jumping genes.It is like deciding that since cats are mammals we can call all mammals cats. Since Mariner genes are a type of jumping gene all jumping genes can be called Mariner genes.TTFN,WK

Not so much, more like Message 81. Given that I did respond to that section in the very post you were replying to I'm not sure what further comment you expect me to make.What I said about that last sentence, and the rest of your excerpt, was... Why on Earth would I disagree with a simple statement of fact? What I might disagree with is the idea that the mariner elements are present in all those species as a direct result of horizontal genetic transfer. In many instances these may represents historical insertions in a common ancestral population for a number of species which may have subsequently multiplied within these lineages, much as the Alu sequences have in primates (Zietkiewicz et al., 1998).TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.Edited by Wounded King, : Formatting of reference and quotes.Edited by Wounded King, : Tidied up grammar, a bit.